Clear, easily digestible pop psychology.
A guide to defending oneself from narcissism in the selfie age.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the reference used to diagnose mental disorders. In the fifth edition, released a few years ago, one of the changes was the elimination of “narcissistic personality disorder” as a diagnosis. The reasons behind its elimination are complicated, but the decision reflects the shifting values of our culture, as social media has given public platforms for budding narcissists to broadcast every selfie, every meal, and every witty remark about the weather. There is growing evidence, partially as a result of the online petri dish of narcissism, that it exists on a spectrum. While you talk about your vacation on Facebook and only exhibit minor traits, there are other people who, described in this highly readable book by longtime psychotherapist and clinical psychologist Burgo as “extreme narcissists,” exhibit traits to such an extent that they can be extremely harmful to relationships. The author outlines the traits specific to narcissists that pose the greatest risks—e.g., making obvious plays for the attention and admiration of others, lacking insight into how behaviors can affect other people, playing the victim and using guilt to manipulate people, and often appearing as self-righteous and “bullet-proof” in disagreements. Taking these, among others, Burgo develops profiles in a series of chapters that use a “type” as a launchpad—e.g., “the bullying narcissist,” “the narcissistic parent,” “the self-righteous narcissist,” etc. Cross-referencing the traits across chapters with examples drawn from case studies of clients he has worked with, Burgo also cites examples drawn from a few of celebrity culture’s shining stars, including Madonna, Mel Gibson, and Kanye West, among others. At no point in the book are narcissists treated as terrible people; Burgo seeks instead to provide a guide for understanding our own narcissism and for figuring out the roles these people can play in our lives.
Clear, easily digestible pop psychology.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8568-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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